The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook: Your Guide to the Best Foods on Earth: What to Eat, Where to Get It, How to Prepare It [Paperback]

Diana Shaw (Author), Kathy Warriner (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 13, 1997

The author of Almost Vegetarian presents the one book that full-time and part-time vegetarians need on their shelves--a book that contains more than 600 contemporary low-fat recipes and invaluable nutritional and culinary information about the vegetarian way of life. 500 line drawings.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This big new book by the author of Almost Vegetarian (LJ 9/15/94) offers more than 600 light, fresh recipes, including lots of variations ("What To Add and When To Add It"), along with information on ingredients ("Curious Cooks Want To Know..."), techniques ("Harried Cooks Need To Know..."), nutrition, and other culinary matters. Shaw has a dry sense of humor, and she obviously loves food (unlike some authors of low-fat cookbooks, who seem to be afraid of it). Both a cookbook and a reference, this is indeed an essential purchase for most collections.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Plenty of vegetarian cookbooks are on the market: so what sets this pictureless guide apart? Newcomers to vegetarian cooking and eating will find this loaded with recipes, information, and instructions on how to customize each dish to suit personal preferences. The emphasis on putting healthy foods together to make a complete meal will provide all readers with clear nutritional guides. -- Midwest Book Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: Clarkson Potter; 1st edition (May 13, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 051788268X
• ISBN-13: 978-0517882689
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 1.7 x 8.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #524,999 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is THE vegetarian cookbook to buy!, June 17, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook: Your Guide to the Best Foods on Earth: What to Eat, Where to Get It, How to Prepare It (Paperback)

This is THE cookbook to buy if you're making the big change from carnivore to herbivore. Written in a friendly, light manner with lots of tips and helpful information, The Essential Vegetarian also offers tasty recipes that don't call for exotic or unusual ingredients.

Before offering the recipes, Dianna Shaw provides several types of menus for different lifestyles. For example, there are menus for athletes, pregnant or nursing women, diabetics and even one for people who want to lose weight. The menus are well-balanced and interesting and offer tips on how to incorporate healthier eating into a busy lifestyle.

My main complaint about other vegetarian cookbooks is that many of their recipes would not be considered by the average American because of the ingredients or length of time required to prepare the dish. This is an important consideration a vegetarian cookbook author should keep in mind, especially if he or she wants to win over more people to vegetarianism. Shaw's recipes are fun and unique, without daunting the novice cook. She includes a few that present more of a challenge to the more experienced cook and even changes a few familiar recipes to provide a new twist, such as her Kidney Bean Hummus.

Shaw leaves little to chance. In her Breakfast section, she gives easy-to-understand and concise instructions on how to create the perfect poached egg. Her recipes for hot cereals, such as oatmeal and cornmeal mush, are clever and helpful, particularly if you're someone like me, who often has trouble avoiding lumps in the cereal.

I strongly recommend this book to vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike. Shaw is not a preachy author. In her introduction, she talks about craving and eating meat voraciously during her pregnancy and makes no apologies. She prefers vegetarianism, but does not come across as a religious zealot. I think even members of the National Cattlemen's Association would like this book. Her other book, Almost Vegetarian, is another good read with great recipes.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars easy and great-tasting-- truly, August 1, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook: Your Guide to the Best Foods on Earth: What to Eat, Where to Get It, How to Prepare It (Paperback)

I usually don't write reviews but this is such a good cookbook that I just felt it was my duty to pass on my recommendation to others. I am an awful cook who has been trying to go vegetarian, and have bought a million vegetarian cookbooks this year. Most of the recipes either take WAY too long and come out tasting only so-so (like deborah madison's) or they're easy and good for you but don't taste great (like cristina pirello's) or they have a ton of cheese and all the recipes are fattening (moosewood cookbooks) ANYWAY, so far the recipes I've tried in this book taste really good AND they're easy. The author tells you how long each dish takes to prepare, and gives you a nutitional breakdown with calories, vitamins, etc. on each recipe.
Also, as the other reviewer noted, they are all pretty low fat without tasting that way-- you don't have to even think about this issue when choosing what to make. All the ingredients are commonly available at any supermarket, even if you live in the middle of nowhere, like I do.
Also the book is 600 pages long-- i hate it when you buy a cookbook and find out only a few of the recipes are any good. I've tried a different random recipe from this book all this week, and they were ALL GOOD! You really could just cook all year from this one book and not have to eat the same thing over and over again.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most usable vegetarian cookbook I've seen., October 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook: Your Guide to the Best Foods on Earth: What to Eat, Where to Get It, How to Prepare It (Paperback)

This is an extremely accessible and user-friendly vegetarian cookbook. Unlike many others in it category--including most of the standard volumes--this book's recipes do not require elaborate preparations. The recipes are direct, workable, and excellent. This wonderful book deserves much greater name recognition than it seems to enjoy because, once it's used, it will replace many of its better-known cousins.